Which email sends worked, and is the list under strain?
The Email analysis judges every send against your own average rather than an industry figure, because a 2% click rate is a triumph for one list and a warning for another. It covers what each send did, what your subject lines and timing say, what is inside the emails, and whether your list is under strain. Where the question is who is left to send to rather than how a send performed, read How many people can you actually email?
Before you start
Open Analysis, choose your tool, and click Email. It reads your tool live and keeps that reading for a few minutes; Read the latest results from your tool re-reads it.
The range here is a send window
On every other analysis the Created filter means the date a record was created. On this tab it means the date an email went out, and with no range picked it covers the last 90 days. That is what lets you line this tab up against a record-based one on purpose — set the same dates on both and remember you are comparing sends in that window with people created in it.
The three rules the whole tab obeys
- Clicks are the main measure. Mail apps now load every message on the reader’s behalf, so an open no longer means a person looked. Opens are shown, and used only where they are the right question.
- A send gets a verdict only when enough people received it, and a pattern only when several sends on each side agree. One large send to a warm list cannot crown a subject-line style.
- Always-on emails are reported on their own and kept out of the day, month and trend analysis, where their numbers would mean nothing.
Every rate counts people, not events: one person opening five times is one open. Rates are out of emails delivered; bounces are out of emails sent. The five tiles at the top are Delivered, Clicked, Opened, Unsubscribed and Bounced, each with the denominator printed underneath it.
Which measure is being used
A line under the tiles says which, and why.
| Condition | What happens |
|---|---|
| At least 30 clicks across the period | Sends are judged on clicks |
| Fewer than 30 clicks but at least 30 opens | Sends are compared on opens, with a warning to treat it as a rough guide because mail apps inflate opens |
| Fewer than 30 of either | No send gets a verdict, and the line says a verdict needs at least 30 clicks across the period |
Every campaign, judged against your own average
One row per campaign, newest first, with its open, click, unsubscribe and bounce rates and a verdict. A campaign needs at least 100 delivered before it is judged at all; below that it reads Too few recipients to judge.
- Far above your average — the cautious end of its range is still at least one and a half times your average.
- Above your average — beyond what chance alone would produce, but short of that.
- About average — the range still contains your average.
- Below your average, and Far below your average at half your average or worse on the cautious reading.
The five best and five worst are lifted out above the table. Totals across the tab are campaigns only: an always-on email reports its lifetime, and adding a lifetime to a quarter makes a number that is neither.
What your subject lines say
Ten styles are tested — short, long, a question, a number, the reader’s name or company, urgency, an emoji, a word in capitals, an opening tag such as “[Webinar]”, and a subject dressed up as a reply. Each is compared on opens, because the subject line is all a reader sees before opening, and inflated opens affect both sides alike.
A style is called better or worse only when all four of these hold, and the card says so:
- At least three sends used it and at least three did not.
- Each side reached at least 500 people.
- The typical send on one side beats the typical send on the other by 15% or more — measured on the middle send each side, so one enormous send cannot drag a whole side with it.
- Two in three of the sends using it agree with the direction.
Styles travel together: if every long subject line is also a question, one effect would be reported twice. The clearest style keeps its verdict, and every other is tested again among sends that are all alike on that one. A style that cannot hold there loses its verdict and says so in its own words, naming the style it overlapped with.
Take care
Even a style that clears all four bars is called a candidate for a split test, not proof. Different sends went to different audiences. The action MarqIQ writes is to run the split test on your next send, never to change every subject line.
The one style that is never recommended
A subject dressed up as a reply or a forward is reported as a warning whenever it is used, whatever it did to opens. It misleads the reader, mailbox providers treat it as a spam signal, and anti-spam law in most markets forbids deceptive subject lines.
Clicks that were never a person
Security software at many companies opens every link in an email before anyone sees it. Where the tool flags that activity, it is counted apart and kept out of every click rate on this page.
- HubSpot and Marketo flag it. Mailchimp and Salesforce Marketing Cloud do not report it, so the card does not appear for them.
- HubSpot already leaves it out of the click rates it reports, without showing how many. This card is where the count becomes visible.
- Where a whole address only ever registered a scanner click, the card gives that count and share. Where every flagged click came from an address a person also clicked from, it says the number of people who clicked is unchanged — and that anything counting raw clicks, such as a score adding points per click, is still inflated.
It is raised as a warning when scanner-only addresses reach a tenth of the addresses with a click, on at least 20 of them, or when flagged click events reach a quarter of recorded clicks on at least 50 of them.
Inside your emails
Where the tool supplies the body, MarqIQ reduces each email to facts — how long it is, where its links go, whether a personal detail has a fallback, whether its images are described — and keeps none of the wording. The card names how many campaigns it covers.
This card needs HubSpot. Marketo, Mailchimp and Marketing Cloud sends are analysed on this tab without it.
| What it reports | What it means |
|---|---|
| A link that goes nowhere | The reader clicks and nothing happens. Usually a button whose address was never filled in |
| A link to a test or staging address | It works for the person who built the email and for nobody who receives it |
| A link that is not secure | Browsers warn before opening it, and some mail apps flag the whole email |
| A link still holding placeholder text | The template’s sample address was never replaced |
| A link that is not a valid address | A typing slip, so it opens an error page |
| Personal detail, no fallback | A first name or company with nothing to show when it is missing, so the reader gets “Hi ,” |
| No preview text | The inbox shows the first line of the email instead |
| Images with no description | Raised on an email with at least two images where half or more carry no description, so a reader whose mail app blocks images sees blank boxes |
The card also gives the typical length and the typical number of places to click, taken from the middle email of the period, and tests two shapes on clicks with the same guards as the subject lines: emails that send the reader to one place only, short emails of 150 words or fewer, and long ones of 400 words or more.
Note
Whether links carry tracking tags is deliberately not judged here. The sending tool adds its tags as the email goes out, so the body as written cannot say whether a click will arrive tagged.
Which day you send
One row per day of the week, Monday first. A day is called above or below only with at least three sends on it, at least 500 delivered, a difference beyond chance, and a gap of 15% or more. Days are in your workspace time zone; where none is set they are in UTC, and the note under the card says which.
Month by month, and the strain on your list
A row per month with open, click, bounce, unsubscribe and spam rates. Under it, the period is split in half at its midpoint and the two halves are compared, which needs at least six campaign sends with three in each half.
- Clicks, unsubscribes, bounces and spam complaints each get a line. A change is called only when the difference is beyond chance and the later figure is at least 25% higher or 20% lower.
- Where you sent at least a quarter more in the later half and readers clicked less or unsubscribed more, the card names it as a tired list and says that sending less often to people who have stopped engaging usually recovers it.
- Where you sent more and the response held, it says that too, in the same place.
Spam complaints
A warning appears once complaints reach 0.1% of delivered email. Gmail and Yahoo ask bulk senders to stay under 0.1% and start blocking mail at 0.3%, and the warning says which side of that you are on. Salesforce Marketing Cloud does not report complaints at all, so the figure is absent there rather than zero.
Always-on emails
Automated and triggered emails go out a few at a time with no single send date, so they are listed separately, ranked by how many they reached, and kept out of the totals, the day, the month and the trend.
One difference is worth knowing before you compare two workspaces. On HubSpot, Mailchimp and Marketing Cloud their figures are for as long as they have been switched on. On Marketo they are for the period you picked, because Marketo reports a stream of activities that MarqIQ counts into one row per email for that window. The note on the card says which of the two you are reading.
What each tool does and does not report
| Tool | What it gives | What is missing |
|---|---|---|
| HubSpot | One row per send, scanner flags per send, and the email body for the content card | Every card runs. The one limit is volume: where HubSpot lists more emails than were read, the note says the 2,000 most recent are covered |
| Marketo | A stream of activities counted into one row per email for the period, plus scanner flags | No content card. Subject lines are read for 80 emails at most, and the note says how many of how many. A period longer than MarqIQ reads in one go is reported as covering the first activities it read, with a suggestion to pick a shorter period |
| Mailchimp | One row per sent campaign, already counted per person, including abuse reports | No scanner flags, no content card. Above 5,000 campaign reports in the period the note says how many were covered |
| Salesforce Marketing Cloud | One row per send with unique opens and clicks | No spam complaints, no scanner flags, no content card. Above 25,000 sends the note says the most recent were covered |
What the figures are measured on
- Every rate counts people, not events, and is out of delivered — except bounces, which are out of sent.
- Totals and every comparison are campaigns only. Always-on emails are in neither.
- A send’s verdict rests on its own delivered count, printed in its row. Two rows with the same rate can rest on 120 people and 40,000.
- A subject-line style rests on the sends each side and the people each side reached, and the card prints all four numbers.
- The split-half comparison rests on the delivered counts in each half, printed in the card.
What it will not do
- It changes nothing in your tool and sends nothing.
- It quotes no industry benchmark. The only exception is the Gmail and Yahoo spam thresholds, which are published requirements rather than an average.
- It keeps no email wording. Facts about a body are read once and the text is let go.
- It does not say how the people who clicked went on to buy. That needs each click tied to a person, which the send totals do not carry.
If it did not work
The tab says no emails were sent in this period
Why: The range is a send window, and with none picked it is the last 90 days.
Fix: Widen the Created filter or click Clear. Where the tool sent only automated emails, the headline says the campaigns are absent and the always-on list below kept running.
No send has a verdict
Why: Either the period holds fewer than 30 clicks and 30 opens, or every send reached fewer than 100 people.
Fix: Widen the period. The line under the tiles says which of the two applies, and each row says Too few recipients to judge where the send itself is the reason.
Open rates look impossibly high
Why: Mail apps load every message on the reader’s behalf, which registers as an open nobody made.
Fix: Read clicks instead — that is why they are the main measure here. On HubSpot and Marketo, open the Clicks that were never a person card to see how much of the activity was security software.
A subject-line style you believe in is not called out
Why: It failed one of the four bars, or it overlapped with a clearer style and could not hold on its own once those sends were set aside.
Fix: Read the style’s own sentence on the card. Where it overlapped, the sentence names the style it was reported under instead.
There is no Inside your emails card
Why: That card needs HubSpot, which is the tool whose email content MarqIQ reads today.
Fix: Nothing to change on the other three. The rest of the tab is analysed for them in full.
The numbers do not match your tool’s own report
Why: Rates here count people and are out of delivered, always-on emails are excluded from the totals, and on HubSpot activity flagged as a bot is left out.
Fix: Compare one campaign row against that campaign in your tool, with the same three rules applied, before comparing the totals.
The figures have not moved since a send went out
Why: The reading of your tool is kept for a few minutes, and the date it was read is printed above the tab.
Fix: Click Read the latest results from your tool. Results for a send that went out in the last hours are usually incomplete in the tool as well.
Next steps
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